


Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds

by ninjamcgarrett



Series: Feels Like Coming Home [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Brotp, Brotp Bucky and Sam 5ever, Diners, Fluff, Gen, Pancakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 03:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1535333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjamcgarrett/pseuds/ninjamcgarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two days after Bucky takes off in the middle of the night from the Avengers Tower, he calls Sam to come pick him up. Sam takes him to a Brooklyn all-night diner, where he helps Bucky cope with the memories of his days as the Winter Soldier. As they're leaving the diner, Bucky sees that the place is for sale and decides to buy it. (Pancakes, Sam being a wonderful best friend, and Bucky owning a restaurant - I don't think it can get much fluffier than that.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maddestofthemad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maddestofthemad/gifts).



> This all started when a friend sent me the still of SebStan sitting on the curb in that scene in Political Animals. The diner idea spawned out of our yelling about feels over the image.

The feel of the pavement was cool against Bucky’s feet as he sat on the curb, rain landing softly on his jacket and slowly soaking his hair. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. It had gotten to be too much for him two days before, when he woke up panting and gasping for air after another night terror. The horrors from his past had come back in his dreams to claw at his sanity and his slowly-healing heart. Instead of talking to Steve or any of the other Avengers, Bucky had pulled on jeans and a jacket in a daze and taken off, forgetting to put on shoes and deciding against taking a phone with him; Stark would just track him down with the bloody thing anyway.

Bucky had spent most of the last two days lurking in the shadows, on rooftops, trying to clear the fog of time and memory from his mind. When that hadn’t worked, he had taken to looking for trouble – and finding a lot of it. He’d stopped three purse-snatchers (for one he’d just stepped to the side and held out his left arm, letting the idiot crack three ribs against the metal arm hidden by his leather jacket), rescued four women from rather evil-looking men with bad intentions, broken up two drug rings, and even stopped a bunch of armed robbers from making a getaway. He’d beaten, kicked, punched, and fought enough evil in two days to at least salvage some of his sense of self-worth. When all else failed and he couldn’t face the emotions any longer, Bucky always reverted back to what he knew, what he was good at – beating the crap out of bad guys and making bad one-liners while doing so.

As the rain had started to fall and the wind turned cold, Bucky had finally caved, fishing out the few spare coins he had in one pocket and finding a payphone. He hadn’t called Steve, which Bucky did feel slightly guilty about because Steve would be worried about him. Not like he had reason to worry as Bucky could more than take care of himself, but still, Steve was one to worry, especially when it came to Bucky. Steve had been put through hell to bring Bucky back, most of it at the hands of Bucky himself – which the ex-Soviet still cringed at the memory of – and was justified in his fierce protection of his best friend.

A black car pulled up to the curb, the lights cutting through the dark and the rain and Bucky squinted against the sudden brightness. The passenger window rolled down and a deep voice said, “I’m looking for a pancake-loving punk. Any idea where I can find him?”

“Ha, ha,” Bucky grumbled, getting in the car and shooting a half-hearted glower at Sam Wilson. “Very funny.”

Sam handed over a pair of black boots and clean socks while taking in Bucky’s appearance. The man’s short hair was disheveled and in addition to the dark rings under his eyes, there was a rather nasty looking cut along one cheek. Bucky’s knuckles on his right hand were scraped and bruised and his hand shook as he pulled on the socks and shoes.

“When’s the last time you ate?” Sam asked, nodding toward the slight tremor.

Bucky paused, looking up at the ceiling, trying to remember. “Um – before I left, I think?” He shrugged. “Haven’t been that hungry.”

Sam merely sighed and put the car into gear before pulling away from the curb. “Food first. Then I’ll take you wherever you want to go. But,” he held up a finger, “if you want me to fly you somewhere, that’s a no-go; Stark took my wings yesterday muttering to himself about upgrades and no one’s seen him since.”

“Barred entry to his lab under pain of bedazzling your uniform?” Bucky asked, a snort escaping.

One corner of Sam’s mouth kicked up. “Yeah, and you know it.”

They drove in silence for a few blocks as Sam made his way back down the lower east side of Manhattan. Bucky stared out the window, soaking in the heat from the air vents as the lights of buildings and other cars sped past them. Soon enough, they had crossed the bridge into Brooklyn and Bucky roused himself from his thoughts.

“Where are we going?” he asked, voice cracking once from lack of sleep.

“Found a place the other day with Steve that you might like,” Sam replied with a smile. “They have pancakes.”

A groan came from the passenger seat and Bucky said, “God, I love you, Wilson. You’re never allowed to leave the Avengers.”

“Ha,” Sam shot back, laughing. “Y’all couldn’t get rid of me even if you tried. You’re stuck with me to the end.”

Finally, at that, a small smile appeared on Bucky’s face. “Good. I don’t think Stark would be too happy about having to constantly save my dumbass from falling through the sky.”

Sam parked the car and plugged a meter, the area dead at this time of night. A few all-night stores were open around the restaurant they had stopped in front of. As he got out of the car, Bucky recognized the area, remembering that Prospect Park – Brooklyn’s rather large version of Central Park – was only two blocks away. He followed Sam inside a small diner, the bell over the door tinkling lightly to signal their arrival. The host called out a friendly greeting and Sam waved in response, leading Bucky to a booth tucked in a quiet corner where the lighting wasn’t as bright and the music wasn’t as loud.

Bucky slid into the booth, the red faux-leather creaking under his weight. He kept his metal hand inside his coat pocket as he perused the menu, looking over the all-day food options, smiling appreciatively when he found a whole section devoted to different types of pancakes. After he and Sam had ordered – hashbrowns, sausage, and French toast for Sam and banana chocolate chip pancakes with a mango syrup glaze for Bucky – they relaxed into the booth.

Bucky fiddled with his tea in the chipped white mug in front of him, only feeling comfortable using his left hand when the hostess retreated to the kitchen to leave them in peace. Their food arrived a few moments later and Sam tucked into his food, piling tabasco sauce and salt and pepper on his food. Bucky was quiet as he pushed the pancakes around his plate, only taking a bite occasionally, despite the addictive combination of banana with mango and chocolate. It took effort and concentration to focus on sipping tea and eating a forkful of pancakes now and again, as if he was barely there. After two days of nearly being swept under by the memories and actively trying to get out of his own head, Bucky was exhausted and distracted.

Sam sat quietly, patiently, eating his food and letting Bucky breathe. Bucky had called him for a reason; Steve may have been Bucky’s best friend, knowing him the best out of all the Avengers, but Sam – Sam _got_ it. Sam knew what it was like to have Captain America as a best friend, he understood the kind of pressure that came with that knowledge, to feel the pressure from that kind of greatness, even if it was unintentional and Steve tried his hardest not to engender that. Steve had believed in Bucky no matter what, from the time they had been kids to the dark days as the Winter Soldier and even after that. Steve had been the one to pull Bucky out, but Sam had been the one to talk Bucky through it.

Sam had more than once found Bucky lurking on the roof of Stark Tower, trying to memorize the new layout of his city, trying to get the broken pieces of his memories to coalesce together into something resembling normalcy. And Sam had let him talk, had let him slowly tell him about the memories that were coming back in fragments, about the trauma, about the guilt, and the sense of being stuck in his own head and helpless.

God bless Sam, Bucky thought as he took another bite of his pancakes (and my God, he thought, these were delicious and he needed the recipe). Sam had talked with him, counseled him on the PTSD, the depression, the anxiety, helped him deal with the memories and the onslaught of emotions. Sam Wilson was a treasure and Bucky would be forever grateful that he was his friend.

“It was the first time I saw the hand,” Bucky finally managed, his voice raw with unspoken emotion. “The first time I woke up and saw what they had done to me.”

He clenched the hand in question as his stomach lurched slightly at the memory of coming to on a surgical table and seeing metal where flesh should have been, touching the raw scars on his shoulder where they had cut away his humanity and replaced it with something hellish, turning him into a monster. There were days he still had trouble looking at the damn thing, even know. It was taking time but he was slowly getting used to the sight of it, as horrifying as it had first been, and every time Bucky used it for good, to defend the weak, to fight evil, he thought that maybe, just maybe he was reclaiming bits and pieces of the humanity that had been ripped away from him when they had attached the arm to him.

“Rough, huh?” Sam asked, taking a sip of his tea. “Coming to and finding out you’re not dead.”

Bucky looked up then, knowing that his eyes were no longer veiled but bared, showing just how painful the memory was, how scarring that moment had been.

“The morning after Riley, my wingman, died,” Sam said, spearing a bit of hashbrown on his fork. “I woke up and thought that it had all been a dream, until I looked at the bunk across the room and he wasn’t there. His stuff was sitting in a box on the mattress, ready to be shipped home. It felt like a punch to the gut and someone ripping my heart out all at once. And I thought, ‘I don’t want to live in a world where this is real’ – I didn’t want to live in a world where the bad guys won.”

“How’d you deal?” Bucky asked as Sam stole a forkful of his pancakes.

Sam looked thoughtful as he savored the pancakes. “Dude, we need to get the chef to give us his recipe,” he said, mouth full of a multitude of flavors. He swallowed and continued. “Anyway. I didn’t, for a while. Just refused to acknowledge what had happened. I finished the tour and came home – and that’s when it hit me. When I had some sense of normalcy back, when I was out of the thick of things. My brain decided, ‘Oh hey, you remember that thing that nearly destroyed you? Yeah, here have it in dream form. Have fun, sucker!’”

Bucky laughed involuntarily, loving that no matter the situation, Sam always found a way to make it better.

“I felt so helpless when Riley got shot down and I felt that same way again in the dreams. It took a while but I started to figure out the solution.” He pointed his fork at Bucky, jabbing the air to emphasize his words. “You, my friend, need to reclaim it.”

“It? It what?” Bucky asked, lifting one eyebrow.

“Everything,” Sam said, waving his hands. “Your arm, your sanity, your feeling of belonging and being one of the good guys, your autonomy.”

“Okay,” Bucky responded, drawing the word out. “Like how?”

Sam speared another bit of a pancake and swirled it around the plate, mopping up some of the glaze.

“Do things that make you feel powerful and in control. Work out and test your arm to its limits to feel like you control it and own it. Write out what you’re feeling to corral your thoughts and emotions into some sort of order. The more you write, the more you’ll be able to make sense of what’s bouncing around in that thick skull of yours.”

Bucky stuck his tongue out at Sam, who merely shot back a wide grin.

“Hell, go out and fight crime as much as you like,” Sam continued, waving his fork in the air. “Just tell one of us before you disappear next time, yeah?”

The ex-Soviet cringed and looked sheepish. “Yeah, sorry about that. I just – needed to get out, felt like I was suffocating.”

Sam nodded knowingly. “Ho boy, have I been there. At least tell Steve next time, the dude’s been wearing a track into the carpet he’s been pacing so much.”

Bucky closed his eyes and sighed. “I owe Stark a new carpet, don’t I?”

A laugh escaped from Sam. “Not just any carpet. That expensive-ass Persian rug in the movie room.”

Bucky let his head tip forward and thunk onto the table. “Great,” he groaned. “There goes this month’s paycheck.”

“Don’t you have like seventy years of backpay from the Army?”

Bucky sat up, rubbing at his forehead as his eyebrows crinkled together. “Good point, but – ” He broke off as Sam maneuvered to steal another bite of pancake. “Get your own – these are mine!”

Sam practically crowed with laughter. “Steve was right; you are _so_ protective over your pancakes!”

Bucky grumbled as he took a bite. “After seventy years without them, can you blame me?”

Sighing and shaking his head with a soft smile, Sam said, “Anyway, the point is: You need to reclaim you, all of you. It won’t fix the problem overnight, but then again, anything that fixes the problem overnight is bound to cause more problems in the morning. It’s a step-by-step, day-by-day process that will take time, but the reward is so worth it. And there is no ‘norm’ anymore for you to get back; I mean, you live with the Avengers and are half-robot, for God’s sake!”

Bucky flipped Sam off, who merely laughed. They fell quiet for a moment as Bucky finished his pancakes and managed to steal a few bites of sausage and hashbrowns from Sam’s plate.

“Thanks,” he finally managed, when Sam just pushed his plate toward him. “For the advice, not the food – well, that too, but – ”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean,” Sam responded with a grin. “And don’t forget the ride and your shoes. Honestly, what kind of boogeyman disappears into the night without a pair of shoes?”

Bucky ducked his head sheepishly and his response was a quiet “The dumbass kind?”

Sam nodded, a pleased smile appearing. “Exactly.”

Later, as they were leaving the diner, Bucky spotted a sign by the door stating the place was for sale. The place was a little worn down, in need of repairs, and had definitely seen better days, but still had a good heart – much like himself, Bucky thought. He memorized the number, deciding to give the owner a call in the morning. Maybe pouring his heart and energy into the place was a good way to start taking Sam’s advice, even if it was a way to distract himself from his own faults and dark corners on nights when the dreams were too much to handle.

Within a week, the papers had been signed and Bucky was officially the owner of the little diner. He drug Steve there one day to show him the place and watched as Steve took stock of the place, nodding in approval as Bucky spelled out his remodeling plans. It took two months of work, but Bucky was damn proud when the renovations were complete. He painted over the glaring white walls with a rich red and replaced the worn out booths with newer, more comfortable ones. Bucky stole armfuls of Steve’s art and had them framed and hung on the walls; his art of the Avengers and of Brooklyn then and now were spaced around the restaurant. The kitchen received a complete overhaul with all new appliances. Bucky and Steve spent a solid week going over the menu, devoting a whole page to pancakes, and deciding that the theme of the restaurant was late-thirties Brooklyn, right down to the food and the music.

Tony even got involved, scrounging archives and dark reaches of the internet for nearly every piece of music created from the roaring twenties to the day Steve went in the ice. He installed Jarvis in the kitchen, so that Bucky could give Jarvis orders to help streamline the cooking process. At first, Bucky had been opposed to the idea, but as he tested out the kitchen, he found he liked being able to ask Jarvis to heat the oven to a certain temperature and hearing Jarvis remind him to take the bacon off the skillet as it had been cooked to a perfect level of crispiness.

As for the chef? Well, Bucky kept the old one, a young man who was a wizard with his recipes. Bucky spent three days a week though as chef at the restaurant, and whenever the Avengers came in after missions (which soon became a team tradition), he took over the kitchen, shooing the chef home for an early day off.

During his downtime at the restaurant, Bucky spent his time experimenting with new pancake recipes, with Steve or Sam eagerly taste-testing the results. Bucky’s infamous Scotch pancakes, developed a few months before, were available only to the Avengers after particularly hard missions and only on the guarantee that Bucky would be in charge of pouring the Scotch because honestly, it was like Clint was trying to get them all drunk off their asses when he was in charge of the Scotch.

As months passed and Bucky developed more tactics for reclaiming his life, he felt more and more of the weight of his past slip off his shoulders. Sam had been right, he thought one day as he carried out armfuls of plates to the Avengers; reclaiming himself and his life hadn’t been easy, but by God, had the result been rewarding. Bucky looked around at the Avengers as they inhaled the food he had brought out for them, saw the happy looks on their faces, and shared a quiet smile with Sam.

“Thank you,” he mouthed.

Sam merely tipped his head with a knowing look. “Anytime,” he mouthed back.

“Bucky, what the hell are these?” Clint asked pointing at golden cakes piled high on a plate in the center of the table.

“They’re Welsh cakes, Clint,” Bucky retorted, rolling his eyes even as he laughed. “They’re good, try them. Sort of like a cookie crossed with a shortbread biscuit and with pomegranate seeds thrown in.”

Bucky watched as Clint sniffed suspiciously at one and then took a tentative bite. His eyes flew wide as the warm, sugary taste filled his mouth.

“Oh, my _God_ ,” Clint moaned, stuffing the rest of the cake in his mouth. He hauled the plate toward him. “Mine,” he hissed at the rest of the Avengers as he guarded the plate protectively.

Bucky just sighed and plucked the plate from Clint’s grasp with his metal hand, setting it back on the table. He pointed a finger at Clint and gave him a stern look.

“Share,” he said, pretending to look menacing, which wasn’t that hard since he was an ex-Soviet assassin.

When Clint pouted and whined, Bucky laughed. “I will go make another batch just for you, Clint. Can you share until then?”

When Clint chirped happily, Bucky turned and headed toward the kitchen, asking Jarvis to heat up the oven. As the doors to the kitchen swung shut, Steve leaned over to Sam.

“Thanks for bringing him here. This place was just what he needed.”

“Nah,” Sam replied, snagging two Welsh cakes from the plate and handing one to Steve. “He just needed to know he wasn’t alone.”

They looked around at the table as the rest of the group squabbled over the last Welsh cakes and Tony shouted over his shoulder for Bucky to hurry up with the next plate, to which there came the response from the kitchen of, “Hold your horses, Iron Ass!” The group, Steve included, burst into laughter at the appalled look on Tony’s face of being called ‘Iron Ass’.

Steve bumped Sam’s outstretched fist. “You’re right. Though, he may have one less friend if Tony and Clint kill each other over those cakes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pancakes, guys, it's a thing now. If you want to read the origin of the Scotch pancakes, go here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/716482 .
> 
> "You need to reclaim you" is the best piece of advice I have ever gotten. Also, pancakes - those help too. <3


End file.
